Animal hijinks in Truckee, California. The BBC, that bastion of fair and “accurate” news reporting refers to Truckee as a Rocky Mountain town. And to think that until now, I thought the Rockies were in Colorado and up (OK, New Mexico and up)!
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The other day while riding downhill on my bicycle, averaging speeds above 35mph, I happened to notice that a squirrel had been struck, perhaps a few moments before I passed it, by another cyclist or a car. The squirrel was not dead, it was struggling and writhing, its head almost entirely severed and it lay there dying. It probably died long before I reached the bottom of the mountain. Note that I captured all this in a fleeting moment - there was a brief instinct to brake and help put it out of its misery but I continued downhill, my thoughts moving quickly - from the shame of not helping the miserable creature by putting an end to its suffering, to the ethics behind my inaction.
I asked myself the question what my “kartavya” (duty) was to that squirrel. What was my role in the death of that squirrel? Am I as responsible for its death as the person who directly laid the hit. What if instead of a squirrel it were a person? Is letting a person die as dastardly an act as laying a hit on that person that caused them to die? I know the utilitarian answer to that question but that is not at all comforting.
I know that if it were a person, I would have done everything in my power to help that person, but that got me to the question - what if the only reasonable help that I could offer that person was, like the squirrel, a quick death. Would I act illegally? Obviously what was supposed to be an exhilarating downhill ride was quickly filled with angst. At least the physical pain of the uphill ride was masked easily with memories of funny expressions. There was zero thrill to be had in this downhill return. I confess that I was at a complete loss, I even blew past a STOP sign, with a middle-aged man yelling sarcastically from his car “Nice Stop”.
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If you are ever in the city of Bangalore and if you plan on getting any sleep, get some high quality ear plugs. Even better would be to get a noise-maker, assuming can sleep to the sounds of babbling brooks or plain white noise (my preference). The city is overrun by dogs and they howl through the night. Most residents are used to this and it doesn’t bother them one whit, but woe is me on a recent trip. Despite carrying earplugs - they didn’t do the job, and turning on overhead fans at my sister’s - they were too quiet (where is the hypnotic whirr of noisy fan when you need one) I struggled with barely a few hours sleep every night.
The dogs in Bangalore are making news too, having attacked and killed a couple of children in the last few weeks. These creatures are everywhere and they are not the emaciated mongrels that I remember from my childhood. Most of these dogs are extremely well fed and a bit more aggressive than the ones that I remember.
A large number of these dogs feed on the meat discarded by the unlicensed meat shops, the rest feed on the garbage that is heaped on the side of the streets by restaurants and residents. A spaying and neutering program is, like most other projects, mismanaged and has failed to control the rapid growth in the number of these dogs on the streets.
The mauling of the kids has put the city government on the defensive. There is a law against killing healthy dogs, even stray dogs, so the ‘hunt’ is on to hold them in shelters. The process of catching these dogs is, I assume, unique to Bangalore- they use metal cables that has the dog bleeding all over by the time they are caught and dragged into the vans. These dogs are then transported to over crowded animal shelters where one can only imagine the pain and suffering inflicted on them being packed like sardines with open wounds. One wonders why they won’t choose a less gruesome method of putting down a dog.
Bangalore clearly faces a public health problem which will not go away anytime soon. While the rich will find ways to get their sleep, the poor have to find ways to keep their kids alive, for this is also a public health problem that more adversely impacts the poor. For Bangaloreans, which is aspiring to become a city of International repute, this is also a problem of how the city is perceived by its large outsourcing clientèle.
arms. The world’s tallest man, a 7-foot-9 herdsman from Inner Mongolia, used his long 41.7-inch arms to save two dolphins by pulling out plastic from their stomachs. Click here for slideshow.
I have only ridden horses a few times in my life. Most of these were in my childhood. The most recent riding experience was in Shi Du in China (often mislabeled as the Guilin of the north). Fellow blogger kinnum and my wife were also present. We hired these dismal looking horses to ride for about thirty minutes.
The mounting was easy despite my short stature. With my boots ensconced in the stirrups, I awaited further instructions. There was nothing coming forth from the ancient looking Chinese woman holding the reins of my horse. I tried not to think of Superman and kept a brave face. Maybe the Er Guo Tou I had consumed before helped. (Did they have RUI — riding under influence — convictions in old times?) Soon we were off, with the horses being walked by the keepers. We took some photographs, exchanged smiles and idle chatter. The walk then turned into a trot and I felt like Kublai Khan surveying a battlefield. It was when the trot became a gallop that the comfort level dipped drastically. We galloped along… pitter-patter… pitter-patter. The hoofs went pitter and my balls went patter.
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Salman Khan, the bad boy of Bollywood, has been sentenced to five years of rigorous imprisonment. And deservedly so. Though I am not sure if the crime for which he was convicted, matches the extreme sentence. The judge (India does not have a jury system) probably wanted to set an example by sending a celebrity to jail for such a long time.
Khan is notorious for being reckless. He is alleged to have driven over quite a few poor people who live in his neighborhood with his SUV. He has also beaten up a number of journalists and was abusive towards ex-girlfriend Aishwarya Rai, a former Miss World. Because of the amount of money riding on this decision, the Bollywood community is in shock and is defending him. I just hope Khan’s judicial appeals fall on deaf ears.
One down, one more to go: Indian justice still has to put the murderer of Jessica Lall behind bars in order to improve its image in the world.
If they name a species after me, I want it to be a tree frog, a spider, or even a louse instead of a beetle. Not because I have anything against the coleopterans but because of the company I would keep. Three kinds of slime-mold eating beetles are called Agathidium bushi, A. cheneyi, and A. rumsfeldi. Then there is the blind cave-dwelling beetle named Anophthalmus hitleri. I would rather be in the company of Hyla stingi (tree frog), Calponia harrisonfordi (spider) or Strigiphilus garylarsoni (louse).
Unless you are a taxonomist, it might surprise you to know that there is no central repository of species names even though it’s been more than 250 years since Carl Linnaeus came up with the Linnaean taxonomy. This is about to change with a new system called ZooBank.
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One of the highlights of my recent travels in India was a reunion with old school friends, some of whom have been part of my life considerably further back than I can even remember. My school batch was, and still remains, a tight-knit bunch, and it’s always a pleasure for me to meet the gang and catch up with the latest going on in everyone’s lives. Almost all have achieved some degree of success in their chosen professions, but some professions are more exciting to talk about than others. Take my friend, Dr. Bobby Rajan, for instance. He’s a veterinarian, but no ordinary one, as he informed us with a straight face, while we sipped our rum-and-cokes contentedly. In addition to the skills possessed by the garden variety vet, he’s also a qualified musth-shooter. At this point, I’m sure you, gentle reader, must be clutching at your armrest, breathlessly wondering what this mysterious substance is. Well, clutch no more, and read on…
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